Scientists Use Remote Satellite Imaging to Monitor Endangered Species
Moscow (Sputnik News) Dec 01, 2014 -
Researchers from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution and the ScanEx Research and Development Center have been using satellite imagery to study the population and movement patterns of the critically endangered saiga antelope. A researcher from the Severtsov Institute gave Sputnik the details.
Using the satellite imagery, taken between 2009 and 2014 by a variety of commercial ob ...
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Brazil's Amazon region houses latex 'love factory'
Xapuri, Brazil (AFP) Nov 28, 2014 -
Deep in Amazonia, Raimundo Pereira expertly cuts a gash in a rubber tree to collect white sap destined for the nearby factory at Xapuri, the world's only producer of contraceptives made from tropical forest latex.
Raimundo's precise, speedy technique bears witness to the fact that he started work aged just nine, accompanying his rubber-tapper father - himself the son of a rubber tapper - i ...
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Pygmies and Bantus flee a war caused by a tryst
Mukondo, Dr Congo (AFP) Nov 29, 2014 -
It all began with a love affair a year ago between a Bantu and his Pygmy mistress, a tryst that so unnerved the enemy peoples of Congo's troubled Katanga province that war broke out.
Fighting between the Bantu land-owners and the hunter-gatherers of the Twa Pygmy groups - pitting bows-and-arrows against machete blades - has since caused some 80,000 people to flee their homes in the mineral ...
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Water-borne disease plagues IS-held city in Iraq
Baghdad (AFP) Dec 01, 2014 -
When Islamic State group fighters swept into northern Iraq's second city Mosul in a lightning June offensive, their propaganda trumpeted a better life for the people under jihadist rule.
Now, nearly six months later, residents there are suffering from a lack of clean water and also a shortage of medicine to treat illnesses caused by it.
The very name "Islamic State" is a clear pointer th ...
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Gold rush an ecological disaster for Peruvian Amazon
Huepetuhe, Peru (AFP) Nov 28, 2014 -
A lush expanse of Amazon rainforest known as the "Mother of God" is steadily being destroyed in Peru, with the jungle giving way to mercury-filled tailing ponds used to extract the gold hidden underground.
Locals describe the area as a tropical Wild West where tens of thousands of desperate fortune-hunters have set up camp around improvised mines that operate around the clock, use heavy mach ...
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Hong Kong leader says protests 'in vain' after violent clashes
Hong Kong (AFP) Dec 01, 2014 -
Hong Kong's leader said Monday that pro-democracy protests were "in vain" after police used pepper spray and batons on students trying to storm government headquarters overnight, in some of the worst violence since the rallies began.
With the protests now into their third month and frustrations mounting, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying hinted that further police action may be imminent, in hi ...
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Dismantling ski lifts and moving villages: Alps adapt to climate change
Innsbruck, Austria (AFP) Nov 28, 2014 -
With temperatures rising faster in the Alps than the rest of the world, alpine countries are working together to adapt to climate change and hope to set an example.
A recent Austrian climate change report found that the country's temperatures had risen twice as fast as the global average since 1880, with the number of sunshine hours in the Alps increasing by 20 percent.
While this may p ...
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More than 3,000 evacuated as French floods toll reaches five
Portel-Des-Corbieres, France (AFP) Nov 30, 2014 -
The worst flooding in years in southern France has claimed five lives and forced more than 3,000 people to evacuate their homes, officials said Sunday.
The latest victim was a 73-year-old man who died of heart failure in Rivesaltes, in the Pyrenees-Orientales region, when trying to force his car through a big dip in a road that was flooded.
Along the banks of the Agly river in the same r ...
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Tuna showdown looms at Samoa conference
Majuro (AFP) Marshall Islands (AFP) Nov 29, 2014 -
Small Pacific island states and powerful foreign fishing nations are heading for a showdown next week over management of the world's largest tuna fishery.
The islands want the annual meeting of the influential Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) in Samoa to limit fishing for bigeye, a tuna prized by sashimi markets in Asia, America and Europe.
They also want limits ...
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Climate rhetoric faces the devil in the detail
Paris (AFP) Dec 01, 2014 -
Politically sidelined since a 2009 UN summit almost ended in a bustup, climate change has resurfaced as a priority but faces a brutal test at talks opening in Lima on Monday.
The 12-day haggle will show what happens when high-minded global vows enter an arena where national interest rules the roost.
"Things are still fragile, but there's been good news," said French climate negotiator La ...
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Sao Paulo drought issue for global concern
Piracaia, Brazil (AFP) Nov 28, 2014 -
He cast his rod happily here for 30 years - but where a river once teemed with fish, Brazilian fisherman Ernane da Silva these days stares out over a valley of weeds and bone dry, sun-parched land.
The southeastern state of Sao Paulo is suffering its worst drought in 80 years with scores of towns sounding the alarm, blaming increasing deforestation, unseasonably high temperatures and creepi ...
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